NBN Co says 119,000 services still can't reach 25Mbps peak speeds

NBN Co said there are still 119,000 active services that can’t achieve the minimum 25Mbps peak download speed the network is meant to deliver, including almost 24,000 services that can’t go higher than 20Mbps.

The updated number, current to the start of June, shows the issue is still present despite the NBN being declared “built and fully operational” at the end of last year.

However, it is well down on the almost 238,000 underperforming services that were active as at the end of last year.

“NBN Co advises that as at June 1 2021, 119,000 NBN services were unable to access speeds of 25Mbps or higher,” the company said, adding that “the majority (80 percent) of these premises are able to access speeds of more than 20 Mbps.”

The 25Mbps threshold was set in the 2016 statement of expectations, but NBN Co has always had a percentage of active premises that don’t meet it.

One reason for this is the co-existence period, a typically 18-month window in which fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) speeds are limited to stop those services interfering with older ADSL services on shared pieces of infrastructure.

NBN Co has previously said it intends to end co-existence in FY24, though it would look to bring forward those timelines wherever possible.

The company said that as of the end of May this year, only 39.3 percent of nodes within NBN its fibre to the node (FTTN) network “have had the co-existence profile removed.”

“This means that the majority of nodes in the FTTN network are still in the process of having the co-existence profile removed,” it said.

NBN Co added that it had not moved active FTTN customers that could not achieve 25Mbps peak speeds into its satellite footprint “on the basis of FTTN performance”.